Steven Van Zandt’s Gangster Redux in ‘Lilyhammer’

When E Street Band guitarist Steven Van Zandt signed the Oslo-based all-girl rock band Cocktail Slippers onto his record label in 2007, he never imagined it would lead him to star in a lead role on Netflix’s first original series.

Van Zandt was in Norway producing the band’s third album, “St Valentines Day Massacre,” when the husband and wife writing team behind “Lilyhammer” approached him.

“It was such and easy and simple idea but a good one,” said Van Zandt of the plot, which follows Frank “The Fixer” Tagliano, a New York mobster who enters federal witness protection after he testifies against his boss. Frank asks to move to Lillehammer, or Lilyhammer, as he calls it, the Norwegian city that hosted the 1994 Winter Olympics.

Van Zandt worked for a year on the script, and spent six months flying back and forth every other weekend from New York to Norway to shoot the series.